


Life

by ardett



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Character Death, Character Study, Coping, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:35:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29880537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardett/pseuds/ardett
Summary: Louis dies. Harry didn't know him.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Life

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this when I was in middle school after a kid in my school, well, the same thing happened. guess it was a good coping mechanism at the time.
> 
> it's been a long time since then.
> 
> Posted: March 6th, 2021

Harry wasn’t prepared when he walked into the classroom. He hadn’t thought that it would be a day different from any other, besides the half day for parent-teacher conferences. No, he hadn’t expected it to be a day like this.

He didn’t expect to walk into a classroom with students, students from his class, kids he knew, crying. Eyes clouded and wet with tears, faces red, others desolate. When he sits down, the teacher if offering a tissue to the girl across the room.

He waits.

The teacher talks about how a seventh grader’s parents are dead, the husband shooting the wife and then committing suicide. He sees jocks, brash and tall, with blurry eyes. The most interesting thing, Harry thinks, is seeing just how everyone reacts to death.

He’s not crying and he still doesn’t understand.

He asks the kid across from him.  _ Who? _

A whispered answer of a kid from their grade.  _ Louis Tomlinson. _

Harry tries to put it together. Louis’ parents died? Somehow it doesn’t make sense, that all these kids would be crying about his parents.

Harry can’t find the courage to ask someone else again about what exactly happened because it’s clear that no one wants to talk about it.

Harry’s in band when the kid next to him asks Nick what happened, Nick whispers something, Harry hears Louis’ name and kid looks shocked and devastated in one stroke. Throughout the entire practice, the two keep glancing at each other with looks of sadness and disbelief and Harry wants to strangle them or yell at them because fuck, there’s something he’s missing.

"It feels like yesterday I was talking to him on Xbox. I said I had to go and he said talk to you soon." And somehow Harry knows that that was the last thing this kid said to Louis and there’s guilt, utter guilt.

Two kids leave at the beginning of the period and don’t come back for a while, Harry wasn’t keeping track,

Harry knows he’s got something wrong. This isn’t normal and it’s fucking with his head and fuck, he thinks Louis died. He doesn’t know. The worst part is that he doesn’t know.

Band is horribly off kilter, with half of the first-chair players missing, solos full of silent measures and eighth graders who can barely play, who don’t want to play.

Something is so terribly wrong.

He asks again, this time a friend, Stan, because he’s really confused and it’s a subject that really has to be tread around carefully and he’s not even sure he’s allowed to ask.

"Wait, was it Louis who died? Or just his parents?"

"You didn’t know? It was Louis, mate. And his parents and younger sisters. They all got shot."

It’s like Harry just opened the door and a cold, frigid breeze just blew over him because, “Shit.” A hand covering his mouth because it’s not sadness, not really. It’s just shock, pure and unadulterated.

It’s not sinking in.

His algebra teacher cancels the quiz, gives no homework for the first time ever and tells the class a story, people still crying around her. The auditorium opens for kids who need someone to talk to, somewhere to go.

Harry’s still trying to remember who Louis was. Harry hasn’t talked to him since last year and even then, their paths rarely crossed. He remembers him as loud and talkative, especially in class. He grasps onto memories of him having a competitive streak that sometimes lent itself to protectiveness. Of their interactions, he remembers that they had social studies together and that Louis passed to everyone on the team in gym, not paying to much regard to skill. Harry’s having a hard viewing it as real.

His third period teacher acts as if he has no idea that the eighth grade is barely making it by and putters along teaching with a quarter of the class absent and the other half in the auditorium.

In fourth period, it hits Harry hard and he couldn’t tell you exactly when it started happening but he suddenly feels like he can’t breath, like the cartilage between his rib bones just started pressing down too hard.

He never knew Louis. Great god, he never really knew Louis, did he?

He doesn’t know how to spell his name, he didn’t even know his last name. He didn’t notice that he moved out of district this year, he just thought he was on the other team. He didn’t know he had younger sisters.

He. Doesn’t. Know. Anything. About. Louis.

And yet he knows everything because they’re both in eighth grade and when you say it like that, it sounds older than it really is because Louis was thirteen, fourteen at most and he’s dead. Louis was asked what he wanted to be when he wanted to grew up by countless teachers, students, friends and he had an answer, probably many different ones. But he never grew up. He never finished that book he started, he never replied to that text, he never got to read that next book in the series that ended in a cliffhanger, he never asked that girl he liked out, he never got to see that new movie that he was looking forward to, he probably never got his first kiss.

Harry’s trying to find enough air but deep breaths aren’t helping and he feels like he wants to rip everything off his body, like he doesn’t want anything making any contact with his skin.

The saddest thing is that this doesn’t change anything. People regret not knowing him better, not replying to his text that one time, not giving him a hug when he left their house but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to talk to that new kid at lunch, they’re not going to notice how one kid is absent one particular day.

Because after all, life goes on.


End file.
